Museum in US returns ancient Rama statue belonging to Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: A 10th century Khmer statue of Hindu god Rama was returned to Cambodia by an American art museum today which was reportedly looted from an archaeological site during the 1970s.

The sandstone statue was stolen from Prasat Chen sanctuary in the remote Koh Ker temple and sold to the Doris Weiner Gallery in New York, after which the Denver Art Museum bought it in 1986, it was reported.

The returned statue of lord Rama, missing some pieces, from the Denver Art Museum. Image source: thehistoryblog.com

“The voluntary return of the statue demonstrates the museum’s sensitivity to the importance of Koh Ker era to the Cambodian culture,” said Cambodian Secretary of State Chan Tani.

Over the past decade, a number of stolen artefacts centuries old have been returned to Cambodia from museums overseas amid ongoing legal battles involving the Cambodian government, aided by UNESCO, to have the artefacts repatriated to the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

“It’s very easy to recognise the style of Koh Ker because statues are extremely massive and at the same time extremely defined,” said Anne LeMaistre, the UNESCO representative to Cambodia.

The repatriated statue is still missing pieces including its head and arms. The government is urging collectors worldwide to return the pieces, which are “part of our soul as a nation”, Tani added. (IANS)

A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture. VOA

India has been the target of over 4.3 lakh cyber attacks from five countries including China, Russia and the US while more than 73,000 attacks were initiated from India between January and June this year, says a Finnish cybersecurity company.

According to F-Secure’s honeypot data, Russia, the US, China, the Netherlands and Germany targeted India with 436,090 attacks. This is nearly 12 times more than which originated from India.

Honeypots are basically decoy servers that emulate the real IT environment of a business enterprise.

Due to its nature, the chip is physically unclonable and can, thus, render the device invulnerable to hijacking, counterfeiting or replication by cyber-criminals. Pixabay

Russia accounted for most cyber attacks on India (255,589), followed by the US (103,458), China (42,544), the Netherlands (19,169) and 15,330 attacks from Germany.

On the other hand, the top five countries that were targeted by Indian cyber attackers were Austria, the Netherlands, the UK, Japan, and Ukraine — a total of 36,563.

“The relatively higher number of inbound attacks on Indian honeypots reflects how the fast-digitising country is becoming more lucrative for global cyber criminals,” Leszek Tasiemski, Vice President of cyber security products R&D at F-Secure, said in a statement on Sunday.

Experts: Cyber attacks Growing Increasingly Sophisticated. Pixabay

“We are gathering and analysing all the pertinent data to ensure that our customers stay protected given the dynamically evolving threat landscape,” he added.

To track these cyber attacks, F-Secure has deployed 41 honeypots across the globe.

“Our public honeypots are a valuable source of threat intelligence and an integral part of the infrastructure that powers our various security offerings, including our Rapid Detection and Response Service,” Tasiemski said.

Honeypots are set up explicitly to grab attention of attackers. They are used to gain critical insights on attack types, popular targets, sources, volume and TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures).

Such insights are collected by deliberately allowing potential attackers to gain unauthorized access to the emulated services of a server and then studying the attack path to the point that the attacker realizes it is a honeypot, F-secure said.